Our Student Behavior Research team —including a staff of about a dozen researchers and analysts at SRI Education—works with state and local education agencies to select, implement, and evaluate programs that meet their high priority education needs. This means we help you find programs that work to improve staff, student, and parent perceptions of school climate and safety, increase students’ sense of belonging and academic engagement, enhance student and staff relationships, and reduce student behavior problems. Our mission is to promote positive behavior interventions within multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS) and to reduce disparities in punitive school discipline practices.
We need partners in our efforts to help districts and schools develop supportive environments and policies that enhance protective factors and improve academic performance. We work closely with dozens of school district leaders and teachers, intervention developers, other researchers, and funders, and we would love to add you to the team. Here’s our philosophy about working relationships and why we value collaboration dearly.
to schedule a phone call or meeting to discuss your partnership interests, resource needs, and research priorities.
| Teachers and School Leaders | Intervention Developers and Research Partners | Funders (e.g., local, state, or federal agency; foundation) |
| Our decades of experience implementing and evaluating school-based interventions helps us understand advantages and practical limitations of conducting research in schools. | We understand intervention development and we respect the product and your educational aims while maintaining a rigorous, Independent approach to the study design. | Our research team is highly responsive to funders’ priorities and mission; we produce on-time, on-budget, and high-quality deliverables. |
| Experience from preschool to postsecondary has taught us to respect school professionals’ educational decisions, school policies and procedures, and values. | We have capacity to scale research and evaluation work across locations; we create efficient data collection and analysis processes to support large-scale studies and abide by What Works Clearinghouse standards. | We build close, professional relationships with our project officers to ensure we meet expectations. |
| We pride ourselves on our high integrity to the rigor of our research practices and the protection of research participants. | We partner with developers and research partners to interpret and disseminate research findings; we collaborate and communicate about all aspects of project implementation—especially about how to get important findings in the hands of professionals. | Our team includes methodologists with sophisticated and state-of-the-art knowledge about analytics—from hierarchical models to cost effectiveness analysis. |
| We will work with you to align resources that meet your schools’ needs and support the sustainability of the programs that enhance school and classroom climate and improve students’ behavioral and educational outcomes. | We put practical information into the hands of local professionals and providers and disseminate it nationally to promote the work of funders and researchers across the globe—about what works. | |
| “Working with SRI has been fantastic; it’s one of the highlights of my work. This partnership really expands and deepens our expertise. The way that Carl and Michelle do their work is very intentional, professional, and thoughtful. They’ve strengthened bringing these opportunities to focus on evidence-based interventions and also bring in the research aspect of it. They introduce us to curricula that we may not find or have easy access to. With both Bounce Back and CBITS, we were able to meet the developer, and some of the best trainers in the country come to train our social workers. That helps to build high quality training and support for social workers and they really appreciate it. Carl and Michelle are really willing to take our feedback and go out of their way to support our social workers.” –Jennifer Donahue, Program Administrator with San Francisco Unified School District |
“I have had the privilege of working with Drs. Woodbridge and Sumi and the SRI team on several research projects related to materials/strategies I have developed. They provide the highest quality of methodological-rigor while insuring fidelity to the intervention model that is the subject of the research. In addition, they consistently treat school and district personnel with respect and they honor the myriad of priorities that the practitioners are juggling every day. Carl and Michelle consistently create wins for the research community, the intervention developer, and the practitioners doing all the real work. I look forward to future opportunities to work with them and the entire SRI team.” —Randy Sprick, Ph.D., director of Teaching Strategies, Inc. and the lead consultant for Safe & Civil Schools |
“SRI consistently produced high quality products, including the research that was done as well as the written products. Overall, they have always done an exceptional job meeting the contract requirements. Personnel employed on contract were of the highest quality. They team exceeded expectations in all regard…The customer service provided by SRI was outstanding. Response to any request is timely.” —Excerpt from federal contract performance review |
How YOU can form a partnership with us
Please contact us at studentbehaviorblog@sri.com to schedule a phone call or meeting to discuss your partnership interests, resource needs, and research priorities.
Topics: Research design
Tags: Collaboration Partners Partnerships Student Behavior Research Team Top 10 reasons to work with us